Saturday, September 4, 2010

I am happy to say I accomplished both. I know it sounds crazy, but I wanted to see what the limit of the die was and how far I could push it until is caved under the pressure (literally!). I learned a lot today in doing this and so far I will say I am not done, no where from it for my samples. I want to experiment with some textures on them and I would like to see what happens with a pierced prior to forming piece which I will get into when I get a little more reliable forms happening. So far, 7 out of the 8 forms survive. The one that I broke and bottomed out were the same and it was interesting getting it out, but it was so cool to see where it literally ripped metal.

Now that I know the breaking point and the stress points that need more filing, I am thinking the next few rounds might go better. So far I have pushed them to a depth of 12mm out of 20mm making me a little over halfway on two of them. I want to continue to push these forms to their limit (hopefully without breaking) for Tuesday.

In other news, I need to get some more muscles to roll print. It wasn't that it was too hard to turn, it just makes your muscles ache a bit after you do it for too long. I hope my 22 ga. copper arrives soon! Went through a ton of metal today and I loved it!

Results:

#1 This was the first one that I did, and it is the first in rotation. After about 5 different runs through the press, it reached a height of about 10mm. This is some movement, but I found better results with slightly higher pressure in some of the ones that will follow especially 4 and 6. They were some of the ones I put a bit more refined measurements of pressure into.

#2- This is the winner of the evening! It cracked after 5 rounds of pressure. When I talked to Brianna before I started she showed me where her forms broke. This will really help me with the rest of mine. I can see here the stress points along the backside and the corner. I honestly did not expect it to break in these locations and I am really glad I went through with my plans to take one to the point of being destroyed. I also love that when it broke it bottomed out the back of the piece. It creates points for me to go back and fix the locations of the breakage. I can see where it started in both cracks, was a point of the die where the metal was possibly a bit sharper then in other places. I will go back in before I finish and file those down a bit so they are maybe not so sharp. An interesting aspect of this is it gave me my measurement for the maximum depth of the die to be about 22mm from the bottom edge of the metal to the top of the curve.

The full set so far of the ones that I have pressed enough to start making something. I want to play with some piercing, roll printing and etching for a few more samples. I think from the notes I have up to this point of about half depth that I can fix the die and continue to make these go to their limit of their depth. I have found the safe range to make them lower without breaking is between 2000-4500psi and 80 durometer before small stress points begin to form.

#4 at around 12mm depth.

#6 around 11/12mm in height. About halfway to the height I think it can reach.

#5 Still in the die. It is getting there!

Die starting to show some signs of wear and needs some repairs. I noticed it started to shift the more I used it. For my actual piece I will have to find a better way to secure the plates then tape. Also, the more I used it, the tape would split into these really neat patterns.

So, I know what I have to do and as soon as I can get in the studio again, I will push them a little farther.

What a good story for a Saturday Morning. So Cheerful and positive. I personally when I read it was wondering why they let her take it so many times, but I get it now. She overcame her hardships and her lack of education to get beyond her means and learn to "drive". Driving has so many meanings, I just think its a really inspirational story in its simplicity.

I have been thinking about this project so much this week, I don't even know why. It has been like it has been consuming my thought process. Containers and Containment bring up so many thoughts but it started to make me think of the individual self as a container and as containing your memories and thoughts. Then I thought about thought (what a weird statement), the duality of it. The fact that a memory has this realistic qualities yet there are always these sensory, imaginative aspects of the memory that have been conceived in our brain.

My grandmother died when I was very young, I think I was about 3 years old, this fact I am actually not sure of when she died. I have told myself I was 3, but I have yet to confirm with anyone the exact year and time of her death. I was very young at the time; however, I feel like I knew her so well. I remember her with long black hair that flowed down her back and she always had the scent of wild flowers, she would particularly fill the house with these flowers she called queen anne's lace. She liked to mix match colors and wore crazy combinations that never seemed to actually match up to one another. The facts of her that I remember are more sensory. I remember the way she used to make me laugh and smile and used to surround herself with sunlight and warmth. She died of liver failure due to reactions of her medications to her dialysis, but before she died she purchased these two small plastic snow globes with white unicorns and green grass bases. When you picked up the snow globe they would play "Somewhere over the Rainbow". My cousin and I each received one of these snow globes after she died. Since that day, I have never thought of her death as a passing, as someone going to heaven, to me she is still here just over the rainbow.

I guess where I am going with all of that is, the reality of the matter is a lot of the memory I have of her is false memory. When she died and when I knew her, she did not have long black her. It was short and a pepper-ish color. She also was not as bright and cheering as I remember, she had been on dialysis since my mother was a child and was in fact pretty sick. I don't remember the dialysis machine that apparently sat in their house. I don't remember the corner it was in even. I just remember the small table behind that chair with the fake plastic christmas tree and the small ornaments. I remember staring at them through the sunlight with the dried flowers around it. The memories I have of her are this combination of reality and false reality. I want to portray that in my container. I want it to have these feel on the outside of the reality of her and the inside this false reality of her "essence". You see what fact of her the the idea of her and when you open it up you see the way I remember her.

In other news....

I have been working hard on making a nice die for my pressings for Tuesday. I want to say it was about 3 or 4 hours worth of work on this die. I know I should have kept it simple because it's only a test, but I learned a ton from the making of this die that I can use to speed up the next one. I also made it in such a way I can make a few adjustments over the next few days to get better outputs if something I don't like is happening with it. I also learned that a lot of my issued with the sawing of the first one was my saw frame, so I have a new one of those coming it. It is really hard to saw straight if you're saw isn't.

I really like this form. I used a template this time (now what is meant by template), it really made things much easier. I have also learned that you have to watch with the smaller details of the form. I know for a fact that some of the small circles I did to the sides will not come out in the die because they did not saw well. I tried to file them out and it worked to a point, but I think a lot of time would have to be spent in order to get those forms to come out in the press. I think for my final design I need to think about elements like that and other possibly ways to achieve those forms. Maybe I die form the main portion of it and go back in and with chasing add in those small details. I will have to think about that.

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About Me

Hi, I am a 20 year-old first semester Junior/Senior at Towson University. I am currently majoring in Interdisciplinary Object Design and thinking about minoring in Physics. I graduated from the Fine Arts A.A. at Catonsville Community College.
Beyond school, I am a volunteer cheerleading coach. I have been in cheerleading for 14 years (starting when I was 6 years old).